The company, headquartered in Chandler, Arizona, is the worldwide leader in the MRAM field. In 2008, Everspin was established after spinning out of Motorola/Freescale. Since 2016, it has been publicly traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the “MRAM” ticker symbol.
Everspin’s knowledge and experience in magnetic memory design, manufacture and delivery into relevant applications are unique within the semiconductor industry. With an intellectual property portfolio of more than 650 active patents and applications, Everspin leads the market in developing magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) bit cells for applications including TMR Sensors, Embedded and Discrete non-volatile Memories.
“We have successfully commercialized two variations of the MRAM technology – Toggle MRAM, which is field switched, and Spin-Transfer Torque MRAM (STT-MRAM), which is current switched,” explains CEO Sanjeev Aggarwal.
“With this technology, we’ve been able to reach out to more than 2000 customers worldwide in various segments, including data centres, industrial applications, factory automation, transportation, gaming, medical equipment, as well as aerospace and defence.”
“We have successfully licensed our MRAM technology for embedded, sensor and aerospace and defence applications, and will continue to commercialize our innovations.”
A new chapter
Over the last few years, Everspin has experienced significant changes. From a loss-making business in 2021, the company was turned around under Sanjeev Aggarwal’s management, achieving profits over 13 quarters and almost tripling financial performance. Time to market was also significantly reduced, with six new products introduced since 2021.
The impressive achievement has not gone unnoticed. “In January 2024, Everspin Technologies, Inc. had the opportunity to ring the bell at the Nasdaq Closing Bell Ceremony at the Nasdaq Market Site in New York, a much-appreciated milestone in which the entire executive team participated. Also, based on its recent performance, we were added to the Russell 2000 Index in July 2024,” says Aggarwal.
Recent achievements also include a strategic award of $14.55M from the US government to develop a long-term plan to provide manufacturing services for the aerospace and defence segments. Under the award, Everspin, the only US domestic supplier of MRAM to the US government, will provide a plan to mitigate risks to its MRAM manufacturing supply chain.
Another strategic contract was signed with QuickLogic Corporation to provide Everspin’s innovative AgILYST MRAM technology, logic design, and back-end-of-line manufacturing services to advance the development and production of a Strategic Radiation Hardened (SRH) high-reliability Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology.
One of a kind
Everspin designs products that offer unmatched advantages. “In today’s data-driven landscape, businesses face the challenge of managing ever-growing amounts of information efficiently and reliably,” reflects Aggarwal.
“That’s why we launched the PERSYST brand—it’s more than just a memory solution. With PERSYST, we’re focused on delivering memory technology that boosts performance and scalability, so businesses can innovate without worrying about data bottlenecks,” he explains, adding that Everspin’s PERSYST 1 Gigabit STT-MRAM will be used in the next-generation IBM FlashCore Modules now in production.
“Our flagship product, the EMxxLX xSPI series, offers the highest performance on the market, making it a game changer for industries that rely on fast, secure, and dependable data access. This means fewer delays, better decision-making, and the ability to leverage data in real-time, all of which are crucial for staying competitive in today’s fast-paced business environment.
The focus is always on quality, he affirms. “We’ve had over 150 million units shipped with extremely high quality. It is not easy to enter the semiconductor market with an emerging technology product – it is critical that our parts are of the highest reliability.”
He further explains that Magnetoresistive RAM technology uniquely offers high-speed, non-volatile memory with very high write cycle endurance. Most non-volatile memories, such as Flash, will wear out after just a few thousand writes. Everspin offers its customers a persistent memory that can withstand the high workload of RAM products, simplifying system design and ensuring critical data protection in the event of power loss.
“Everybody wants data as fast as possible. That’s why we introduced the PERSYST line earlier this year, enabling reads and writes in nanoseconds. It is robust in harsh environments such as extreme temperatures and radiation exposure (deep space and LEO – a rapidly growing market). That’s the differentiator that Everspin brings to the table.”
The human aspect
Aggarwal affirms that even the best of technologies would be nothing without people and says that Everspin strives to create an inclusive workplace environment at all levels of the organization.
Everspin enables its people to change roles and rise from within the ranks; the CEO himself is a good example. Starting as process integration manager, Aggarwal moved through the ranks, managing projects and departments, before ultimately becoming CEO.
“There’s a lot of opportunity for people to grow with us and our high employee retention rate proves that our approach is working. Almost 50% joined us in the Motorola days, so they’ve been dedicated to this technology for almost 25 years.”
Everspin’s design team is approximately 25% of its 85-member staff supporting MRAM design for customers and its internal products. “Everspin is a company that relies on innovation. We have a core group of people who have pioneered our MRAM technology and made it a commercial success. We engage and sponsor university research, have our own R+D capability in-house, and maintain an entrepreneurial atmosphere to bring in the best talent.”
As one would expect, the key suppliers in the semiconductor supply chain are critical to the company. “Our excellent quality reputation is upheld by partnering with our suppliers to ensure we build in quality at every step and provide a long-term, stable supply.”
“We use tier 1 foundry suppliers such as TSMC and GlobalFoundries to provide the quality and scale needed to support demanding customers. And we would not be successful without the support of our tool vendors and suppliers such as Applied Materials, Canon-Anelva, Class One, Nordiko Technical Services and others,” reflects Aggarwal.
Staying at the cutting-edge
Speaking about recent developments, he points out that the market is driving increased electrification, power efficiency, and intelligence in all aspects of consumer and industrial electronics.
MRAM technology has the versatility to offer both performance and lower power because of the ability to store critical AI model data and record continuous parametric data, enabling AI processing systems to be deployed in remote, low-energy systems across the spectrum of connected industrial applications.
“We have continued to invest in the development of MRAM products in more advanced technology nodes with new products being designed in 22nm and 16nm FinFet advanced process nodes, working with our foundry suppliers to ensure access to 300mm wafers to support the expansion of our product portfolio.”
“We hope to grow as a result of our effort to win new designs with our customers with our PERSYST products. We are also focused on bringing higher density products such as a 1Gb xSPI memory that brings an orders-of-magnitude improvement in write performance and endurance compared to older NOR Flash products, opening up a larger market for MRAM.
“Finally, we are at the forefront of enabling new uses of our MRAM technology in high-performance logic (FPGA) and AI-enabled systems with our AgILYST distributed MRAM capability,” says Aggarwal. “Going forward, we will strive to stay at the cutting edge of applications and to continue to bring value to our shareholders.”
